Five days out, I’m still in enough disbelief that putting thoughts to type seem silly. I just know that after writing sporadically at best for nearly six years here at DGWU, what the hell is the point if I don’t at least put something together for the greatest Buffalo sports moment in a decade? It was something so incredible, so cathartic, so confounding that it brought emotions to me and many that we thought had been killed off long ago. Really, most of us had no comparison as adults, nothing to point to and say “if the Bills pull this off, it will be unforgettable.” Sure, it would have been the playoffs for the first time, and as I touched on a couple weeks back, after such a shitty year as 2017, such an end would undoubtedly be special. But tears? Below zero airport trips? Six figure donations to the charity of a guy that beat us this year? Unfathomable.

Last Sunday my fiancé and I woke up hungover from going out with friends for the Penn State win in the Fiesta Bowl. Our plan was to celebrate New Year’s at her cousin’s place in Baltimore, so after purchasing the requisite rolaids, iced coffee and Excedrin we hopped in the car for the 80 minute drive. My plan was to go to the Baltimore Bills bar in the Canton neighborhood to take in the game; I’d first gone there in 2014, the Bills OT win over the Bears being my first game. Since then I’d watched plenty with them, done massive tailgates in DC and Baltimore for Bills games with them, watched the EJ horror show in London at 8am with them, and now, despite having not taken in a game with them since the 2016 opener, I had to watch this one.

I pulled up to the bar about 4:15, zubaz, Tyrod shirtsy, Bills hat. My fiancé, a die-hard Ravens fan and native Marylander gets out, kisses me goodbye and drives to her cousins while I head upstairs, post-up against the bar and order a bucket of Blue Lights, downing two before kickoff due to nerves and the need to kick the hangover. I see familiar faces, including the guy who wears shirts featuring each week’s opponent- today his is the Dolphins logo, except it’s a dick. The Bills Backers have the upstairs three rooms of this bar, and after taking an early lead you can constantly hear someone yelling out Bengals, Raiders, Jags updates, which solicit groans or cheers. There is t-shirt guy standing on a bench leading us in the shout song, and blue and red touchdown shots. Me or one of the guys on either side of me will say something regarding the Bills game to no one in particular and the others will answer. One of the guys is a little too hard on Tyrod for my taste but it’s okay because across the bar there’s a guy in a Tyrod color rush jersey. People pour down the stairs at halftime to smoke, a tradition I partook in during my time here but now as the only vice I kicked for good in 2017, I work on the second half of my second bucket of blue lights.

The crowd has swollen as we get to the second half. More people are arriving upstairs, mostly 20 and 30-somethings, jerseys of McCoy, Sammy, Mario and Kyle Williams, winter hats and gloves, those Bills shirts with sequins on them. They came to see and share in the moment with the other ex-pats, the ones who will truly understand if it actually happens.

The Dolphins make a game of it, but after Kyle scores at 19-0, people are constantly clamoring for the Ravens game to be put on. The score updates of Oakland and Tennessee have long since stopped and it’s become apparent that we need the Bengals to play very unlike the 2017 Bengals. Poyer’s pick seals the win and soon after the Ravens take their first lead of the game.

It had been a good run, really. 9-7 from a team that I had contending for the first pick in the draft is pretty damn good in a vacuum. But the Peterman game, I’m already fretting that the Peterman game is going to be what keeps us out. Sure, the Bengals can score, but they’ve been outscored 17-7 in the second half and Andy Dalton is spraying throws all over the field. It’s fine though, we know what missing the playoffs is like, and hey, I did have fun for a little while there. Plus I can just root for Missy’s team in the playoffs; I’ve long rooted for the Ravens to do well, just as she texts me in the fourth quarter to say she understands why I can’t do so here.
​
The dagger INT is called back and there’s life but it’s 4th and 13. I have one blue light left, as I know I’m going to want to call an uber soon. My arms are folded in skepticism, not unlike what video shows Kyle Williams doing, standing impatiently with his hands on his hips.

My first thought when Boyd catches it is “first down! Field goal range! Don’t fumble!” I actually thought for a split second the cheering was premature but then- THEN- he sees the Ravens overpursuing, then trying to tackle high for some reason and he scores!

About twenty minutes after it ended, after assuring a few fellow fans that we’d once again be there for the big Bills-Ravens party next season, we sauntered downstairs. I sidled up to the bar, ordered a natty boh to decompress, took a joyous phone call from my buddy, hugged one last Bills fan and climbed into my Uber, gushing to the driver about what had happened as he smiled, perhaps not understanding what had happened but knowing whatever it was had been big and made me VERY happy. When I arrived to the party, instead of catching flack everyone is just happy for me. I’d packed two outfits for the evening, one for making the playoffs and one for not; the zubaz stay on, the jeans in my bag upstairs. Missy says it’s the happiest she’s seen me since our Europe trip because it without a doubt is. We’re the last ones to go to bed in early 2018, long after catching the videos of the Bills fans greeting the team at the airport.
Looking back, the only thing I can compare that evening to is Pominville. For anyone under 30, even that is somewhat tempered by adolescence so for them there is no reference point. Really, over 11 years after that night, there’s no reference point for us either. There’s been graduations, relocations, long relationships starting and ending, marriages, kids, mortgages in between, before even addressing the rapid decay of all ideals and institutions that would allow us to provide a world to our children that isn’t completely and irreparably fucked.

As the godforsaken hole that is Jacksonville is inundated with Bills fans across the country, I don’t know what to think for Sunday. They could win, though I don’t expect them to. Since the Peterman game, they’re 4-2 with their only losses against New England. Fournette is very good, though Blake Bortles is not. The Bills run defense looked stout last weekend, which is a thing. I know a fanbase of yokels serving crappy teal food to their fans Sunday certainly seems to be begging the gods of good taste to put an end to this. But seriously, it’s the definition of house money. Not only is the drought finally, mercifully dead and buried, it was done in a manner that elicited the most raw and spontaneous joy that this region- and those scattered across the land who call it one- has seen in decades. So I won’t ask for more.
​
But I wouldn’t mind it. Go Bills.

On November 29th, 2010 I was doing what I typically do on Sundays late in the Bills season: running errands. On this day, that meant the laundromat down the road from my apartment in Barre, Vermont. The Bills were 2-8, the Steelers 7-3 and in my mind, there was far too much bullshit in my life to let the Bills be part of it. I’d graduated law school a year earlier, entering the workforce with literally the worst graduating year in post-war American history, and my situation at the time reflected that. My 650 foot studio apartment was above the homeowners, a batshit Christian family who homeschooled their kids, one of whom seemed almost certain to commit a mass murder one day. After bringing a girl home one night, I got a call forbidding that in the future (I was 25). I’d made up excuses when my parents would ask to visit, embarrassed that, to my dismay my hastily thought out plan of filling my Buick with my shit and driving 8 hours to take a $14 an hour job wasn’t working out as well as I’d hoped. I’d been the first in my family to go to college, fulfilled the plan I’d had since I was in middle school to get my law degree and in the months following that I’d had an engagement fall apart, found only a $10 an hour data entry position as firms implemented hiring freezes, been put in the hospital from a viral heart infection and shared the tiny apartment with my mom that I’d lived in since I was five. Completely out of ideas I’d hopped in the car to the most isolated place I could think of and only four months in it was becoming apparent that I’d miscalculated, again.

What I’m saying is, I really didn’t need the Bills in my life that day. But it was the laundromat and it was back when you could stream the radio feed for free so there I sat, listening to the game to drown out the sounds of the small child and large dog that also found themselves spending a Sunday afternoon in a miserably boring situation.

They’d been down 13-0 at the half but had made it 13-10 when they forced a turnover and suddenly the idea of missing a comeback upset win for laundry of all fucking things was unacceptable. Eschewing the second load, I headed to Mulligan’s Pub, my go-to since it was both walking distance from my place and the only joint in town with the NHL package. On the way I tossed on the authentic Poz jersey my ex had gotten me for my 24th birthday and eagerly sidled up to the bar where a gaggle of fans rooting for various teams had gathered at tables behind me to watch their games on the bank of televisions.

You probably know by now that this was the Stevie Johnson game. It’s something seared into my brain, staring absently at the television, thoughts skidding down the slipperiest of slopes, turning this Billsy moment in a lost season into something much larger, something personal and more sinister, an indictment of my decision making that went far beyond driving the half mile to the bar. I heard the voice from one of the tables behind me, a woman’s voice. I hadn’t said anything since the drop, hadn’t turned around, interacted or barely moved aside from taking pulls of my blue light.

If there’s one thing about adulthood it’s that it’s interminably boring. To say this comes as a surprise would be somewhat disingenuous; after all we know from a young age that the adults around us operate on a continuous loop of work shifts, errands to procure items to satisfy our need to stay alive, television and sleep. Hell, it’s the general awareness of this looming tedium that drives people to have so much fun in college and their early twenties, the concept that what lies ahead is its own kind of death, a death of spontaneity, a death of new experiences. When that time comes- and it does, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise- it’s not just that it makes the 8-5 routine so crushingly dull, it’s that it makes your life before that tedium seem even further away, make it feel that it happened to another person.​It’s what makes seeing Jason Pominville back on the ice so strange. Despite hanging around in a Sabres uniform until the lockout season, it’s the goal, the president’s trophy, the winter classic that I remember him from, the years where I was in school and anything was possible not just for the Sabres but for the world, for one’s future. To see him back on the ice when everything is just so static- go to work, come back from work, go to the gym, cook dinner, shower, go to bed- and not unspecified is strange. I look at him like a relic despite being only a year older than me, which probably says just as much at how I view myself as how I view him.

Our Beautiful Boys

It’s why sports are still needed. Not simply as a distraction- though believe me, we’ll get there- but because you don’t know what’s going to happen. All day you may discuss your thoughts on twitter, one result may be more likely than another but ultimately you don’t know what you’re going to see, which is a hell of a thing when you’re about to watch Jack Eichel play. It lends the opportunity for something you haven’t seen before, something that provides a surprise in a world where the only surprises are the rotating taps at the bar down the road or finding that salad is buy one get one free at the supermarket. In short, it’s nice to have hockey back again.

I think it’s fair for fans to feel robbed about last season. Year Two AT (After Tank) was supposed to be the first opportunity to enjoy the rewards of the suffering, the trades, the worthless free agents, Andre Benoit, Torrey Mitchell, Ted Nolan, Coyotes updates, Trending Buffalo. It was supposed to include a playoff push at least and that was almost secondary to getting to see how Eichel took hold of the league in his second year. He came back right at the perfect time to serve as a distraction from the anxiety that comes with being made a prisoner of your own country but by that time the team was right back where they’d been every year of the decade before the tank, 8, 10 points back with the season practically a write-off.

January 20th I called in sick, turned off twitter notifications, threw on the Ken Burns Civil War series at around 11am when I started drinking. There was an aura of nihilism, hopelessness, dread that months later hasn’t dissipated so much as settled over the country like the Denora Smog, and struggling to breathe is just how we exist now. As they’ve always been in bad times there was a Sabres game that evening, won in overtime against Detroit by a goal from Okposo. The next night they were in Montreal, trailing late. As my inaugural bender continued they tied it up, Lehner made the save of the year (likely bolstered by a fellow white supremacist being in office) and Bogosian won it again in overtime. They’d provided a brief moment of joy after years of darkness.​Two nights later Eichel makes the play of the year and suddenly a few weeks later I’m watching from the bar at the golf dome with my parents as the Sabres climb one point out of a playoff spot. That was the tease, the brief run that made us think about what could have happened with a full year of Jack, wonder what could happen if they were managed by a coach whose style encouraged players to use their speed to force the opponent into capitulation and not simply hang around and hope for a timely goal. We have all of those things now and as we get ready for the season I must say, it’s terrifying.

EDIT: So if you're reading this you already know. The season's been boarded up. The doors, the locker rooms, everything. We're staying in the Comfort Inn, room 112. I love you.

Or, alternatively you can read what I wrote before the news Eichel will be out 4-6 weeks (say 8 to be safe) because really, truly, it changes little about the enthusiasm or really what your expectations should be.

In every article, book, quote, post I’ve ever read about writing, the one piece of advice that is nearly universal is this: keep writing. Write every day, write something. For many years I did; I wrote in college classrooms during lectures, wrote during work hours in Vermont and Buffalo, wrote at home with the sound of a game in the background. If I wasn’t working on some story (which, from age 12-26 I almost always was), I was working on papers, about the death penalty, the Dred Scott decision, Vatican II, the influence of the frontier on early American Literature (gleamed almost entirely from SparkNotes), or the impact personality had on the Good Friday Agreement.

Point is I can tell you that when it comes to getting words to flow onto the paper/screen, nothing can replace the simple act of beginning to write. You can think about your post while in the car, search your tweets for a coherent #narrative, smoke a blunt and watch a Ken Burns series; nothing is going to help as much as sucking it up, closing the door and starting to type shit out until it clicks.

I say this because for the last few months I’ve had absolutely NO idea what I wanted to say about the upcoming Sabres season. There’s no longer a goal that’s bigger than the game; with the first year of development behind Eichel and Reinhart, and the first year of playing together behind nearly everyone, the shift as gone from “let’s just hope they’re fun and we see improvement” to “okay well now let’s try to make the playoffs.”

The fact that this takes some getting used to is by itself a testament to how shitty the past three seasons have been. The fact I can barely remember what it’s like to be a fan of a team that had expectations and potential makes me want to open my window and scream “what the fuck have we been doing!?”​Then I watch Jack Eichel (EDIT: in 4-8 weeks), Sam Reinhart and Ryan O’Reilly and I’m like, “oh yeah.”

I didn’t think I’d write about this simply because I’ve talked about it so much, written so many words about it while only scratching the surface. I am acutely aware that all of this, the emotional connection I feel to it still today, the memories it elicits comes off both heavy handed and corny. I’m a cynic, antagonistic, dismissive about many things these days (off the top of my head: The election, fake jersey wearers, Rex Ryan, Pennsylvania drivers, my retirement prospects), but this, this was a time where everything- on the surface- seemed perfect. There will be greater moments ahead both in sports and in life but never have they both met in such a beautiful collision for me as what happened in spring 2006. This is that run as I experienced it, as much as I can remember and write without going down the many various tangential rabbit holes that would easily quadruple the size of this piece. If you wanna hear about any of the spinoffs sometime, @ me.

I usually find myself thinking about that playoff run around this time of year and I suppose since you took the time to click this, you do too. However, the ten year anniversary of the 05-06 team has come abruptly, quietly, though I suppose that’s what happens with a team that can’t even claim the most basic banner. They didn’t win their league, their conference, or even their division. Any and all metrics tell us that we should have a greater affinity for teams that came after- in 2007 and 2010 for instance- or before, in the case of 1999 or 1997. Still, The Buffalo News has practically made it a daily feature and even the Sabres twitter account has gotten on board despite the fact everyone in the marketing department thinks the organization was founded in 2010.

This summer is also my ten year college reunion. In what I am sure will shock all of you, none of my friends from Tonawanda High went away to college, and as an only child and the first one in the family to go to college, I felt rather overwhelmed, even at a tiny liberal arts school in Olean. I found some friends but felt awkward, out of place; I loved to drink so that alone got me through a year and a half until I studied abroad. When I returned my junior year, however, it was like a light bulb went off. The day I drove onto campus (drove! Finally!) I went to a party and met the girl that would dominate my memories of that Sabres run and years beyond. I made better and closer friends on campus, established a usual crew, house, bar, a place for the first time as a Bonnie.

Subsequently, after being one of dominant interests through high school, the Sabres found themselves relegated to the back of my mind in college. I’m not even sure we got MSG the first couple years I dormed there (to put it in perspective, I had an actual phone in my room freshman year because there weren’t any cell phone towers); abroad I could only follow the results from checking the TBN website each morning on campus. By junior year and the lockout, I just didn’t care. I was coming into my stride socially, getting acquainted with some of the lovely women on campus, basking in the Red Sox first World Series title in 86 years and for a month in there the Bills actually mattered! Come 2005 and the start of my Senior Year my biggest concerns were, in no particular order:

Breakup with the Long Island girl I’d started dating spring semester for some inexplicable reason

Get into law school at Penn State

Eschew responsibility for fun at every opportunity

Not a bad setting to take in the 05-06 season imo

​My first actual memory of that season was reading Sports Illustrated’s preview issue (Sabres 28th, Hurricanes 29th); my first firm memory of that season was in November. I was home from Bonas for the weekend and had brought a girl with me for the first time. She was the now-sophomore whom I had met at that party my first night back Junior year. Her age mattered little on this trip since there were numerous dive bars around Tonawanda that would serve a 19-year old without question, even more of which that would serve her accompanying usual customers such as my friends. For whatever reason we watched a game against the Senators in my grandparents' basement, several friends who I don’t exactly recall, me and her. As the Sabres took yet another early season shellacking at the hands of this apparent juggernaut (research tells me it was a 6-1 loss), I shook my head and commented to no one in particular “they are so fucking good.”

The boys are back. In this episode, with a delayed release due to Dubs being equal parts overworked and forgetful, The Outlander, The Commander and The Barrister gather from their disparate locations outside of WNY to discuss, in large measure, the value in recognizing expat stories when we discuss the City of Good Neighbors. We also make bad jokes, curse a bunch and talk about beer, the Sabres and awful sports media, as per protocol.
Music by Avalanches, streaming below, iTunes subscription through the button below that, download here or here, RSS subscribers hit here.

Last time I wrote here, it was regarding the depressing, soul-sucking death march to 30th place and the hand-wringing, moral crusading, negative nancies and militant pragmatists that came with it. It was by far the least amount of fun I’ve had following this franchise for the last twenty-five years or so, and that’s selling it short; it was not fun at all. There was zero fun outside of the occasional gallows humor that comes with some of the worst hockey players in franchise history hockeying together at once.

Yet I’ll remember April 10th. I went to Orioles opening day with my girlfriend and her friends, a miserable 50 degree day where the Blue Jays crushed the home team - much like they would to clinch the division title less than six months later - before we started barhopping. Shortly before some hardcore browning and blacking out between the two of us respectively, in the last final seconds before my phone died, I refreshed my score app continuously to see the Sabres lose to Columbus. It was glorious. Aside from the guarantee of McEichel, it was such a relief to just be proven right after doubling down on the certainty of 30th the entire season. As any borderline narcissist knows, things like that are victories in themselves.

The Sabres, regardless of the reasons for excitement that I assure you I’ll get to, are in a peculiar position they haven’t found themselves in for some fifteen years: that of afterthought. This is Bills time, and it will continue to be Bills time until that team’s season has either run its course or stomped on our hearts (nice start Sunday btw), forcing us to return in November or December to the team that has been our salve, our dependable solace for more consecutive football seasons than we’d care to address. It is that dependability, that wins help numb the pain of a previous Sunday’s disappointment and even losses (it’s a long season and what do you want, they were dead last two years in a row) help get us through the time in between those Sundays that for now just seem like such an insufferably long time.

I feel for many of us born in a certain window, who came of age in Western New York at a certain time, have felt more connected to the Sabres than the Bills mostly due to results. On my 15th birthday I watched from my Grandparents house as the Sabres took a 3-1 series lead over the Leafs in the Conference Finals. Two nights later my Mom dropped a friend and I off at the old Tops on Young in Tonawanda (now a Big Lots/Subway) just as Game Five started. The store played the game on the PA system and we got to hear RJ’s voice call the comeback victory and trip to the Stanley Cup Finals. To pass the time throughout the night, a large group of fans taught us Euchre, a game I’d play pretty much every lunch period for the rest of high school.

Despite being numbers three and four in line, the antiquated system at Tops was too slow when the tickets went on sale. Didn’t help that the two middle aged guys in front of us bought four tickets to each home game but when it came our turn, my friend got one ticket to Game Three, me one ticket to Game Four. I was dropped off at the foot of Washington Street while my Mom and Grandfather went to Coca Cola Field to watch the game on the scoreboard. I’ve been to many games afterwards and maybe seen better teams, but the noise when Sanderson scored on a breakaway in that game (the only home Cup Final win in forty years) was the loudest I’ve ever heard that arena.

I was hooked. Seven years later I was on the precipice of graduating college and was #blessed enough to have some of the best weeks of my life tied into the most exhilarating run a Buffalo team has given us in a generation. I got to watch Game 1 against Philly in the last row of the arena, where my first hug was not my girlfriend but the stranger who shared his nachos with me (and brought HIS girlfriend). I got to watch the Sabres murder that finesse team day drinking before a house party, I got to watch Game 1 against Ottawa at a Quad Party at Canisius, Game 3 from the Bonaventure Golf Course Clubhouse with over a hundred folks jammed four rows deep behind the bar to squint at the one small TV in the corner. Game 5 was the night before graduation, slip n’ sliding down a hill in the rain afterwards, warming up that chill at a bonfire until 5am with fifty friends who just didn’t want morning to come before my girlfriend told me “Matt you graduate in four hours.”

I listened to the Drury game in a tiny townhouse bedroom at Penn State, Property book open but used only to rest my elbows as I leaned as close to my speakers as I could, hoping for a miracle that, for once, came. I watched the mad rush to the postseason in 2011 in a dive bar in Barre, Vermont and welled up when the Flyers inexplicably played for a tie. And April 10th this year I high-fived people in Baltimore over a loss, the meaning of which they couldn’t understand. But it started long before all this.

In this slightly (read: very) belated publication of the Buffalo sports podcast you love to hate, we give you a glimpse into the week the was 8 days ago - before James Harrison called his sons entitled pussies, before the Bills signed IK and Tyrod Taylor became a thing, before Paul Cambria stormed Bedenko's Facebook page and gave us a glimpse of the best defense attorney talent Buffalo has to offer. 'Twas a simpler time. It's another long one. Take breaks if you need to, but come back so we can finish the job. It's Paul Olczak's first CrapTastiCast, after all, and we wanted to treat him right. Music by way of The Jambrones, OK Go, EXGF, Disclosure, and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats. Some good, good shit in the episode, y'all.

You can streamline this aural methadone below, download here or here. RSS subscription is this, and iTunes button is below and always on the right column because branding. This and all our myriad podcast offerings are generally cataloged in the handy Deeg Podcast Industries tab above our altogether depressing site banner above.

Last night I was on a date in the Fells Point area of Baltimore, my favorite spot for food and drink nightlife in the city- well, definitely drink nightlife, Canton has some great food places to offer as well. Anyway, I was relieved about this not simply because the beer list at Max’s Taphouse is the most exquisite of anywhere I’ve ever been, but because I wouldn’t be sitting on my ass feeling obligated to watch the Sabres and Leafs. Perhaps I could have requested it be put on but I’m not a sick individual; no, I would just check the score periodically during the night. My first two checks had the Sabres down 2-1 and 3-2 respectively; all was in order, everyone could back the fuck off the ledge and suddenly the 2-4 stretch would be down to 2-3. Next check they were suddenly ahead and then the game was over. It was disappointing and I was eminently thankful I was not subjected to watch that hand-wringing farce let alone the tire fire that was sure to be my twitter feed, which has devolved in some deranged game of whack-a-mole, where every completely unhinged formally sane individual I have to mute simply results in finding two more who have come down with some sort of space dementia like Buscemi’s character in Armageddon.

"I think Howard and Jeremy are going to take my call- I got a good one!"

The discussion about this season should end on April 11th, but I realize that is a pipe dream. This has been an embarrassing chapter for everyone and only a sadist or a troll could ever use the word “fun” to describe this season (thank goodness the afternoon show on WGR is anchored by an individual meeting this description). This is a season full of days that feel like Thursdays but are really Tuesdays. This is a season where 140 characters is insufficient for nuance and however many words Tim Graham threw into his garbage article last week is far too many. Last Thursday’s win/loss against Phoenix (get some fans and then I’ll acknowledge your silly rebranding Arizona nonsense) may have embarrassed the players but it was the strongest evidence to date for all that #HockeyIQ stuff Ted Black won’t stop babbling on about whenever he gets near a microphone. The question at the base of everything is one I find at the end of the day no one disagrees with. Having the opportunity to draft first or second in this draft will make the team better than not doing so will. The degree is something we can only speculate on but it certainly appears- and everyone with the intelligence to speak on such things seems to agree- that it will be a significant one. The drop off from McDavid/Eichel to say, Strome is noticeable to say the least. For a team that was putrid last year and is pitiful this year, it logically follows that that significant difference may ultimately mean the difference between the next relevant appearance for the team is the 2nd round in '16-'17 with McEichel or getting bounced in the first round in 17-18 with random third pick. It’s a reasonable assumption, just as people who point at the Red Wings or the Ducks as examples that there are more ways to do it are reasonable when they do so. I think what bothers people the most at the prospect of losing a top-two pick is the McEichel way is almost certainly the most fun way to build a team. At the end of the day they are fun players, great players, and the insecurity under the very thin skin of the fans that have stuck around for every insufferable second of the eight-year elevator free-fall from Alfredsson’s wrister to cheering Phoenix’s winning goal aren’t wrong for wanting that. We’ve watched the other hometown team get its shot in the arm, get fun players, a fun coach, make following them exciting, interesting. We want something similar at First Niagara Center and I can’t blame anyone; it’s a lot easier to go through the slow climb back into daylight when whoever is leading it can make your jaw drop every single game.So if we all can agree that we want the same thing, why is everything so awful? Well, as someone who has felt the heat wave of the hydrogen bomb takes emanating from Western New York all the way here between Baltimore and Washington, I have more than a few things to say. I really, REALLY wanted to let this season go by without a related post, so I could then pop up after 30th was clinched, giving the double middle fingers and we could all have a laugh. I’m also not one to tell people how to be a fan- outside of bandwagoning and/or carpetbagging- but this isn’t that; personally I think you can go to FNC and root your little hearts out for the opposing team, just as you can yell from the 300’s that Weber sucks in the non-bizarro world.

I was sitting in my office yesterday morning and frantically refreshing my Twitter feed; not simply because I am way too reliant/addicted to modern technology but because, as I have been for the last several days, I am craving, demanding more Rex Ryan #Content. Last Saturday I stood in a bar in the Federal Hill area of Baltimore (think Elmwood) with my girlfriend and several friends, mowing through buckets of Bud Light and the occasional round of cherry bombs, watching what, for a while at least seemed to be the funeral for the Patriots season. Sometime during a lull in the second half I pulled out my phone and absently began scrolling through Twitter only to find news that Rex Ryan had been brought back for a second interview. Suddenly, inexplicably, the Bills had seized my focus from the fantastic playoff game in which the rest of the bar was so wholly wrapped up. That focus remained the rest of the evening, through the anguished screams consuming the bar that sounded so familiar, through slipping on sidewalk ice on the way to the car which also felt so familiar (seriously, salt your sidewalks, Baltimore), to Sunday morning when I hacked through the haze that was my hangover, grabbed my phone and let out what can only be described as a joyous squeal upon seeing Mr. Ryan would be the next coach of the Bills. I have read everything about the hire; I’ve read national writers, New York City writers, Buffalo News writers, all writers (except Paul Hamilton, who writes as though he handled downed power lines in a storm). I scrolled through photo galleries on the Bills website, watched the news conference in my office, and listened to any reaction that wasn’t phoned into a WGR switchboard. And now I sit here, refreshing Twitter as the hype begins to subside and I am still craving my Rex content, so I guess I will simply create my own.